It’s a good idea to display recent post titles with a small excerpt instead of simply displaying plain post titles. Many ways are there in WordPress to show recent posts and here is one of those.

Paste the below code in your theme files where you want to show the recent posts. I prefer using it in footer (footer.php).

<ul>
<?php query_posts('showposts=3'); ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<li><?php the_excerpt(__('(Continue Reading)')); ?></li>
<?php endwhile;?>
</ul>

If you have written an excerpt in the Edit Post page, then the code uses that excerpt. If not, then it automatically creates excerpt from the beginning lines of the post.